The following is a sermon delivered on the Lord's Day, May 31, 2020, at First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, KS. The text was from Matthew 6:7-8 on the subject of not praying like a pagan.
5 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9 Pray then like this:
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen."
In case you haven't been watching the news lately, our culture is currently in chaos. That is an evergreen observation. Really, is there ever a time in our world where it could not be said that everything is a mess? Someone ten years from now may hear a recording of this sermon and think, "Wow, did he record this just yesterday?"
Perhaps you woke up this morning, you got ready to come to church, and you asked yourself, "I wonder if Gabe is going to preach a sermon related to all the crazy stuff that's going on." The answer is yes. No matter what the current events may be, I can think of nothing better to preach on than the power of prayer.
Jesus begins His lesson on prayer by teaching us how not to pray, which we considered last week in verses 5 and 6. He said, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites," once again confronting matters of the heart. Don't behave one way in view of others and in your heart be far from God. You may fool others, but you cannot fool God. He knows the mind and heart of every man, and He will render to each person according to his ways (Jeremiah 17:10). So take heart that the Lord is near.
Jesus says, "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret." Do not pray wanting man to see you. Pray knowing that God sees you.
Notice that Jesus describes our Father as being in secret. Why is God in secret? Because He is holy and we are not. Because man has sinned against God, we are separated from God. Part of the curse upon mankind is that God would be more difficult for us to see. And yet as Paul preached at the Areopagus in Acts 17:27, "He is actually not far from each one of us." He said in Romans 1:20, "His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made."
So it may be difficult to see God, but we can certainly know that He is there—most especially because Jesus reveals the Father to us. John 1:18 says, "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side," that is Christ, "He has made Him known." Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus "is the image of the invisible God." Verse 19 says, "For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." In Matthew 11:27, Jesus said, "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."
We know the Father in heaven through Jesus Christ the Son. And when I say know, I don't simply mean we know of the Father. I mean we know the Father as intimately as anyone may know their own earthly father. We have a relationship with the Father through the Son. We have been adopted as sons and daughters of God through Christ the Son of God. For now, we see God by faith. But as Horatio Spafford so famously penned, "Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight."
The rest of verse 6 says, "And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." There's some interesting phraseology there in the Greek. The King James Bible and the Young's Literal Translation both say that the Father will reward you openly. "Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." The point being that you pray to the Father in secret not to be seen by others, and the Father will reward you in such a way as to be seen by others. Now, that doesn't mean God is going to heap open reward on you so that you will become the envy of all your friends.
Remember again 1 Peter 5:6 which says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you." There's a proper time when the Father will reward you, and that time may be in heaven among the saints, who will see the reward your Father gives you, and we will all glorify God because of it. So do not pray to be known by men. Pray as you are known by your Father who is in heaven.
Don't pray like the hypocrites—that's the instruction in verses 5 and 6. But then we get to verses 7 and 8, and Jesus says, "Don't pray like the Gentiles either." I want you to notice something before you continue on. Notice that in verse 6, Jesus says, "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door."
Many pious Jews loved to pray near open windows so that they could be heard by others. You might pass by someone's house and hear them praying even from their own dwelling, so you will think, "Wow, that guy must be really godly. Listen to how often he prays, even in his own home."
That's why Jesus says, "Go to an inner place in the house and shut the door." You're probably familiar with the King James Version that says, "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet." This was the part of the house where extra garments and vessels and sleeping mats were stored. Jesus was basically saying, "Don't pray to be heard by others. Go pray where only the mats will hear you."
Now notice that in verse 7, Jesus says, "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do." So here's the flow of Jesus' instructions. First, He says don't pray like the hypocrites. Don't stand up in the synagogues or out on the street corners with your arms in the air so that others will see you.
(By the way, if you have ever wondered why a standard posture of prayer is to bow your head and close your eyes, this is why. It's a posture contrary to the way the hypocrites prayed. They lifted the head and their hands, standing out in public so they might be seen by others. But you close your eyes and bow your head. Pray to the Father in secret. Now, even bowing your head and closing your eyes can be hypocritical, but anyway—I'm just sharing with you a fun fact as to why we pray with heads bowed and eyes closed.)
The point remains, don't pray out in the open to be seen by others. "Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward," Jesus says. If the recognition of man is what they want, then that's all they're going to get. "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door."
So a disciple of Jesus has followed Jesus' instructions, they go into their room to pray, and how do they pray? Well first of all, Jesus says, "Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." This instruction is in the context of private prayer. Assuming you've gone into your room and closed the door, don't start praying like a pagan. There is a way to pray to your heavenly Father, and it's not the way the pagans pray to their gods.
Yes, we have the word Gentiles here, but pagan is synonymous with Gentile. The Greek word is ethnikos, and in addition to Gentile, it also means pagan or heathen. This is anyone who is a non-Jew. If you were not of the people of God descended from Abraham, you were a pagan. The same is true today in this way—if you are not of the people of God through Christ, you are a pagan.
What is a pagan? Basically a pagan is someone who worships the created rather than the Creator. Even those who claim to worship God may still actually be pagans. For example, a Mormon may claim to worship the Creator, but they worship a created Jesus. Literally, their Jesus is created. He is the literal offspring of God the father. A Muslim may claim to worship the Creator, but they worship a version of god created by Muhammad.
Other gods are obviously the creations of men—gods like Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon among the Greeks; Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva among Hindus; Yama, Mahakala, and Yamantaka among the Buddhists. These are not creators, they are created. They are idols wrought by man to do man's bidding.
Even atheists, agnostics, and other secular humanists worship gods. He worships the god of self. He worships the god of naturalism. He worships the god of materialism. His moral standard is whatever he wants it to be.
I have never met an atheist who wasn't spiritual. I've known atheists who were into various forms of Buddhism or Taoism or finding inner peace or getting in touch with nature or new ageism or reading horoscopes or communicating with the dead or dabbling in witchcraft or the occult. Atheists are some of the most spiritual people I've ever met. They just hate the God of the Bible.
The late atheist Carl Sagan was really into searching for extraterrestrial life. Now, you may have never thought of this before, but the search for extraterrestrial life is pagan. It is attempting to communicate with or hear from intelligences on a plain of existence beyond our own. Does that not also sound like the definition of a séance—in which the participants attempt to channel ghosts or evil spirits?
A few weeks ago, the Pentagon declassified several videos that show UAPs: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. (This is the new term they're using to replace UFO, which is an Unidentified Flying Object. I've always said, "Yeah, I've seen a UFO. I saw a flying object I couldn't identify—hence, a UFO." But saying that is totally different than saying, "I believe in aliens from another planet.")
Anyway, I've watched these videos that were released by the Pentagon, and what they show are flying objects that cannot be identified, and what they do in the air defies physics. No one knows what they are, where they came from, or where they go. These are not video tricks. It's not a bug on the lens of a camera or anything like that. They are verified by our own military intelligence as airborne objects defying what we know of natural law.
A documentary film recently came out entitled Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun. This documentary is not another one of those films interviewing people who are speculating what's inside Area 51 or talking about a UFO they might have seen. This documentary includes real-life prestigious scientists who say we have already made contact with these extra-terrestrials, and they tell you how you can communicate with them, too.
One of the things that is stated in the documentary is that these extra-terrestrials—not aliens, but ETs, who exist and communicate on a whole other level—they are not a threat to our national security, they are not a threat to our planet, but they are a threat to how we view ourselves, theologically and philosophically. That doesn't mean we should fear these entities, the filmmakers say. It means we should want to learn more about them. As Carl Sagan said decades ago, "When we learn who they are, we will learn who we are."
Building a certain narrative, the documentary pushes the viewer to believe that we need more people to make contact with these entities. The film even uses the word "relationship." We need to have a "relationship" with them. Since these beings travel and communicate on a whole other quantum level, we also need to communicate with them on their level. How do we do that if their technology is so much more advanced than ours? We communicate with them—no kidding—through thought and meditation. The documentary tells the viewer how to make contact with extra-terrestrials using meditative practices and shares the testimonies of people, including educated scientists, who have accomplished this.
Friends, this is the occult. It's a satanic ritual. These are the same practices pagans have employed for centuries to communicate with their spirits. It doesn't matter that you now want to call your séance science. It's still demonic. I don't deny that they're making contact with something. I absolutely believe they are. But they're communicating with demons, not ALF. You might be able to reach across the void and communicate with these intelligences, too, and you may not like what you find there.
In Deuteronomy 18:10-14, the Lord says to His people, "There shall not be found among you… anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this."
A pagan priest can even look like a scientist. What we call sorcery might be modern medicine, and what we call divination might be an attempt to communicate with an extra-terrestrial intelligence. The point being: even secular naturalists pray. They pray like pagans. And what does Jesus say here? Don't pray like pagans.
Prayer is not a mindless, thoughtless enterprise. We're not trying to empty our thinking and become one with everything around us. Our union is with the Father. He is a person. Yes, He is God, but He is a person—the first person of the Trinity. And like any conversation you have with any person, prayer is talking to God.
Though God is invisible, He is not absent. He is with us when we pray. There must be substance to our prayers. Furthermore, there must be sense in the words that we pray. You don't utter nonsense when you're talking with a friend—at least I hope you don't. Maybe I need to ask your friends. Likewise, don't speak nonsense when you talk to God.
Jesus says here, "And when you pray, do no heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do," or in the King James, "as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." What are these many words that we are talking about? When we read "empty phrases" or "vain repetitions" or "mindless speech," the Greek word here is battalogeo. This is the only place in the New Testament the word appears. It's actually a composite of two words: batta and logos, meaning "to speak." Literally, the word is "batta-speak."
The pagans would pray these prayers that were long on noise but short on meaning. They might pick one word or sound and repeat it over and over and over again, to remain in a state of prayer but not actually saying anything. The standard way of describing such prayers was "batta-speak." It's as if they were reciting "batta" over and over, and it just sounded like "batta-batta-batta-batta-batta-batta." (When I learned this, it reminded me of being at a baseball game, and saying, "Hey, batta batta batta batta batta, swing batta!") It's like the way we use the word "yadda." So this kind of prayer would be like saying, "Dear God, yadda yadda yadda."
Is there any kind of prayer in the church today that might resemble this kind of prayer that Jesus is telling us not to pray? Perhaps you thought of the practice we call "speaking in tongues." But what the Assemblies of God church or the Pentecostal church down the street calls "speaking in tongues" is not what the Bible calls "speaking in tongues." In the Bible, speaking in tongues is speaking other human languages. But the charismatic notion of speaking in tongues is nonsensical gibberish.
In his book Strange Fire, John MacArthur points out that the Pentecostal charismatic movement "radically changed their interpretation of the New Testament, manipulating the text in order to justify and preserve a counterfeit. Thus, the clear teaching of Scripture about languages was twisted in order to redefine tongues as nonsensical gibberish and thereby fit the modern phenomenon" (pg. 72).
My friends, if praying in gibberish is really how you want to pray, I can teach you how to do that. You will be able to pray with the best of the nonsensical preachers, like Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, and Joyce Meyer. Are you interested? Here is a prayer following the charismatic practice of praying in tongues:
"She came in on a Honda. O my shin, O my knee. See my bow tie. Tie my bow tie."
And now I will interpret this prayer for you: "She came in on a Honda. O my shin, O my knee. See my bow tie. Tie my bow tie." There you have it. Praying in tongues.
Perhaps you saw the video that went viral a few months ago featuring televangelist Perry Stone, praying in tongues while he was playing on his cell phone. At first he prayed the gibberish I just demonstrated for you. Then he started going, "Yes, Lord, have your way, have your way, have your way." Then it looks like he gets a text message or something, for he starts playing on his phone, but he's still trying to speak in tongues, and he can't do two things at the same time. So what comes out of him is just obnoxious groaning. Then he goes back to mindless repetition again saying, "By the anointing, by the anointing, by the anointing, by the anointing."
Jesus called this kind of prayer pagan because that's what it is. The pagans pray just like this: batta batta batta batta batta. It's nonsense. No where in the Bible do you find any instruction to pray this way. Every prayer in the Bible—from Moses to Joshua, from David to Solomon, from Elijah to Elisha, from Isaiah to Ezekiel, from Jesus to Paul—every prayer makes sense. When Jesus teaches us how to pray, He teaches us a clear, articulate prayer. This gibberish that is called "speaking in tongues" is pagan. Don't pray like a pagan.
Verse 7 again: "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." Ecclesiastes 10:14 says, "A fool multiplies words." Jesus goes on to say, "Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him."
In other words, there's no need to drone on and on believing as the pagans do that the longer you're in a state of prayer, the greater the likelihood that God will hear you. If you are a Christian, God is with you. Of course He hears you. You are His child. And if you know that God knows all, then you know that God knows your needs even better than you know your needs. He who searches mind and heart knows what you're going to say before you say it.
Read Psalm 139.
That's a prayer we just read. All one hundred and fifty Psalms are prayers. If you need more examples on what to pray, there's literally a whole book of the Bible filled with them. Here David has said, "Before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether." Your thoughts aren't nonsense, are they? (Again, I might have to ask your friends about that.) If your thoughts aren't nonsense, don't let your words be nonsense. Pray clear prayers to the Lord as He has taught us to pray.
Now, just because God knows what we are going to pray before we pray it, that's no excuse not to pray. Don't say to yourself, "Well if God knows what I'm going to ask for, then why do I even need to bother asking?" That's prideful. That's like saying, "Well, my wife is supposed to love me no matter what, so why do I need to talk to her?" You talk to her because you want to—because you love her.
Likewise, pray to God because you want to. Just like you should talk to your spouse because you want to, because you love your spouse, pray to God because you love Him. You cannot have a relationship with someone you never talk to, and so it is the same with God. To neglect to pray to God is selfish. It's prideful. It's to say you've got this whole thing figured out and you don't need God.
Read Isaiah 7.
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5 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9 Pray then like this:
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen."
In case you haven't been watching the news lately, our culture is currently in chaos. That is an evergreen observation. Really, is there ever a time in our world where it could not be said that everything is a mess? Someone ten years from now may hear a recording of this sermon and think, "Wow, did he record this just yesterday?"
Perhaps you woke up this morning, you got ready to come to church, and you asked yourself, "I wonder if Gabe is going to preach a sermon related to all the crazy stuff that's going on." The answer is yes. No matter what the current events may be, I can think of nothing better to preach on than the power of prayer.
Jesus begins His lesson on prayer by teaching us how not to pray, which we considered last week in verses 5 and 6. He said, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites," once again confronting matters of the heart. Don't behave one way in view of others and in your heart be far from God. You may fool others, but you cannot fool God. He knows the mind and heart of every man, and He will render to each person according to his ways (Jeremiah 17:10). So take heart that the Lord is near.
Jesus says, "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret." Do not pray wanting man to see you. Pray knowing that God sees you.
Notice that Jesus describes our Father as being in secret. Why is God in secret? Because He is holy and we are not. Because man has sinned against God, we are separated from God. Part of the curse upon mankind is that God would be more difficult for us to see. And yet as Paul preached at the Areopagus in Acts 17:27, "He is actually not far from each one of us." He said in Romans 1:20, "His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made."
So it may be difficult to see God, but we can certainly know that He is there—most especially because Jesus reveals the Father to us. John 1:18 says, "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side," that is Christ, "He has made Him known." Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus "is the image of the invisible God." Verse 19 says, "For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." In Matthew 11:27, Jesus said, "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."
We know the Father in heaven through Jesus Christ the Son. And when I say know, I don't simply mean we know of the Father. I mean we know the Father as intimately as anyone may know their own earthly father. We have a relationship with the Father through the Son. We have been adopted as sons and daughters of God through Christ the Son of God. For now, we see God by faith. But as Horatio Spafford so famously penned, "Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight."
The rest of verse 6 says, "And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." There's some interesting phraseology there in the Greek. The King James Bible and the Young's Literal Translation both say that the Father will reward you openly. "Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." The point being that you pray to the Father in secret not to be seen by others, and the Father will reward you in such a way as to be seen by others. Now, that doesn't mean God is going to heap open reward on you so that you will become the envy of all your friends.
Remember again 1 Peter 5:6 which says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you." There's a proper time when the Father will reward you, and that time may be in heaven among the saints, who will see the reward your Father gives you, and we will all glorify God because of it. So do not pray to be known by men. Pray as you are known by your Father who is in heaven.
Don't pray like the hypocrites—that's the instruction in verses 5 and 6. But then we get to verses 7 and 8, and Jesus says, "Don't pray like the Gentiles either." I want you to notice something before you continue on. Notice that in verse 6, Jesus says, "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door."
Many pious Jews loved to pray near open windows so that they could be heard by others. You might pass by someone's house and hear them praying even from their own dwelling, so you will think, "Wow, that guy must be really godly. Listen to how often he prays, even in his own home."
That's why Jesus says, "Go to an inner place in the house and shut the door." You're probably familiar with the King James Version that says, "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet." This was the part of the house where extra garments and vessels and sleeping mats were stored. Jesus was basically saying, "Don't pray to be heard by others. Go pray where only the mats will hear you."
Now notice that in verse 7, Jesus says, "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do." So here's the flow of Jesus' instructions. First, He says don't pray like the hypocrites. Don't stand up in the synagogues or out on the street corners with your arms in the air so that others will see you.
(By the way, if you have ever wondered why a standard posture of prayer is to bow your head and close your eyes, this is why. It's a posture contrary to the way the hypocrites prayed. They lifted the head and their hands, standing out in public so they might be seen by others. But you close your eyes and bow your head. Pray to the Father in secret. Now, even bowing your head and closing your eyes can be hypocritical, but anyway—I'm just sharing with you a fun fact as to why we pray with heads bowed and eyes closed.)
The point remains, don't pray out in the open to be seen by others. "Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward," Jesus says. If the recognition of man is what they want, then that's all they're going to get. "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door."
So a disciple of Jesus has followed Jesus' instructions, they go into their room to pray, and how do they pray? Well first of all, Jesus says, "Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." This instruction is in the context of private prayer. Assuming you've gone into your room and closed the door, don't start praying like a pagan. There is a way to pray to your heavenly Father, and it's not the way the pagans pray to their gods.
Yes, we have the word Gentiles here, but pagan is synonymous with Gentile. The Greek word is ethnikos, and in addition to Gentile, it also means pagan or heathen. This is anyone who is a non-Jew. If you were not of the people of God descended from Abraham, you were a pagan. The same is true today in this way—if you are not of the people of God through Christ, you are a pagan.
What is a pagan? Basically a pagan is someone who worships the created rather than the Creator. Even those who claim to worship God may still actually be pagans. For example, a Mormon may claim to worship the Creator, but they worship a created Jesus. Literally, their Jesus is created. He is the literal offspring of God the father. A Muslim may claim to worship the Creator, but they worship a version of god created by Muhammad.
Other gods are obviously the creations of men—gods like Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon among the Greeks; Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva among Hindus; Yama, Mahakala, and Yamantaka among the Buddhists. These are not creators, they are created. They are idols wrought by man to do man's bidding.
Even atheists, agnostics, and other secular humanists worship gods. He worships the god of self. He worships the god of naturalism. He worships the god of materialism. His moral standard is whatever he wants it to be.
I have never met an atheist who wasn't spiritual. I've known atheists who were into various forms of Buddhism or Taoism or finding inner peace or getting in touch with nature or new ageism or reading horoscopes or communicating with the dead or dabbling in witchcraft or the occult. Atheists are some of the most spiritual people I've ever met. They just hate the God of the Bible.
The late atheist Carl Sagan was really into searching for extraterrestrial life. Now, you may have never thought of this before, but the search for extraterrestrial life is pagan. It is attempting to communicate with or hear from intelligences on a plain of existence beyond our own. Does that not also sound like the definition of a séance—in which the participants attempt to channel ghosts or evil spirits?
A few weeks ago, the Pentagon declassified several videos that show UAPs: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. (This is the new term they're using to replace UFO, which is an Unidentified Flying Object. I've always said, "Yeah, I've seen a UFO. I saw a flying object I couldn't identify—hence, a UFO." But saying that is totally different than saying, "I believe in aliens from another planet.")
Anyway, I've watched these videos that were released by the Pentagon, and what they show are flying objects that cannot be identified, and what they do in the air defies physics. No one knows what they are, where they came from, or where they go. These are not video tricks. It's not a bug on the lens of a camera or anything like that. They are verified by our own military intelligence as airborne objects defying what we know of natural law.
A documentary film recently came out entitled Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun. This documentary is not another one of those films interviewing people who are speculating what's inside Area 51 or talking about a UFO they might have seen. This documentary includes real-life prestigious scientists who say we have already made contact with these extra-terrestrials, and they tell you how you can communicate with them, too.
One of the things that is stated in the documentary is that these extra-terrestrials—not aliens, but ETs, who exist and communicate on a whole other level—they are not a threat to our national security, they are not a threat to our planet, but they are a threat to how we view ourselves, theologically and philosophically. That doesn't mean we should fear these entities, the filmmakers say. It means we should want to learn more about them. As Carl Sagan said decades ago, "When we learn who they are, we will learn who we are."
Building a certain narrative, the documentary pushes the viewer to believe that we need more people to make contact with these entities. The film even uses the word "relationship." We need to have a "relationship" with them. Since these beings travel and communicate on a whole other quantum level, we also need to communicate with them on their level. How do we do that if their technology is so much more advanced than ours? We communicate with them—no kidding—through thought and meditation. The documentary tells the viewer how to make contact with extra-terrestrials using meditative practices and shares the testimonies of people, including educated scientists, who have accomplished this.
Friends, this is the occult. It's a satanic ritual. These are the same practices pagans have employed for centuries to communicate with their spirits. It doesn't matter that you now want to call your séance science. It's still demonic. I don't deny that they're making contact with something. I absolutely believe they are. But they're communicating with demons, not ALF. You might be able to reach across the void and communicate with these intelligences, too, and you may not like what you find there.
In Deuteronomy 18:10-14, the Lord says to His people, "There shall not be found among you… anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this."
A pagan priest can even look like a scientist. What we call sorcery might be modern medicine, and what we call divination might be an attempt to communicate with an extra-terrestrial intelligence. The point being: even secular naturalists pray. They pray like pagans. And what does Jesus say here? Don't pray like pagans.
Prayer is not a mindless, thoughtless enterprise. We're not trying to empty our thinking and become one with everything around us. Our union is with the Father. He is a person. Yes, He is God, but He is a person—the first person of the Trinity. And like any conversation you have with any person, prayer is talking to God.
Though God is invisible, He is not absent. He is with us when we pray. There must be substance to our prayers. Furthermore, there must be sense in the words that we pray. You don't utter nonsense when you're talking with a friend—at least I hope you don't. Maybe I need to ask your friends. Likewise, don't speak nonsense when you talk to God.
Jesus says here, "And when you pray, do no heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do," or in the King James, "as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." What are these many words that we are talking about? When we read "empty phrases" or "vain repetitions" or "mindless speech," the Greek word here is battalogeo. This is the only place in the New Testament the word appears. It's actually a composite of two words: batta and logos, meaning "to speak." Literally, the word is "batta-speak."
The pagans would pray these prayers that were long on noise but short on meaning. They might pick one word or sound and repeat it over and over and over again, to remain in a state of prayer but not actually saying anything. The standard way of describing such prayers was "batta-speak." It's as if they were reciting "batta" over and over, and it just sounded like "batta-batta-batta-batta-batta-batta." (When I learned this, it reminded me of being at a baseball game, and saying, "Hey, batta batta batta batta batta, swing batta!") It's like the way we use the word "yadda." So this kind of prayer would be like saying, "Dear God, yadda yadda yadda."
Is there any kind of prayer in the church today that might resemble this kind of prayer that Jesus is telling us not to pray? Perhaps you thought of the practice we call "speaking in tongues." But what the Assemblies of God church or the Pentecostal church down the street calls "speaking in tongues" is not what the Bible calls "speaking in tongues." In the Bible, speaking in tongues is speaking other human languages. But the charismatic notion of speaking in tongues is nonsensical gibberish.
In his book Strange Fire, John MacArthur points out that the Pentecostal charismatic movement "radically changed their interpretation of the New Testament, manipulating the text in order to justify and preserve a counterfeit. Thus, the clear teaching of Scripture about languages was twisted in order to redefine tongues as nonsensical gibberish and thereby fit the modern phenomenon" (pg. 72).
My friends, if praying in gibberish is really how you want to pray, I can teach you how to do that. You will be able to pray with the best of the nonsensical preachers, like Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, and Joyce Meyer. Are you interested? Here is a prayer following the charismatic practice of praying in tongues:
"She came in on a Honda. O my shin, O my knee. See my bow tie. Tie my bow tie."
And now I will interpret this prayer for you: "She came in on a Honda. O my shin, O my knee. See my bow tie. Tie my bow tie." There you have it. Praying in tongues.
Perhaps you saw the video that went viral a few months ago featuring televangelist Perry Stone, praying in tongues while he was playing on his cell phone. At first he prayed the gibberish I just demonstrated for you. Then he started going, "Yes, Lord, have your way, have your way, have your way." Then it looks like he gets a text message or something, for he starts playing on his phone, but he's still trying to speak in tongues, and he can't do two things at the same time. So what comes out of him is just obnoxious groaning. Then he goes back to mindless repetition again saying, "By the anointing, by the anointing, by the anointing, by the anointing."
Jesus called this kind of prayer pagan because that's what it is. The pagans pray just like this: batta batta batta batta batta. It's nonsense. No where in the Bible do you find any instruction to pray this way. Every prayer in the Bible—from Moses to Joshua, from David to Solomon, from Elijah to Elisha, from Isaiah to Ezekiel, from Jesus to Paul—every prayer makes sense. When Jesus teaches us how to pray, He teaches us a clear, articulate prayer. This gibberish that is called "speaking in tongues" is pagan. Don't pray like a pagan.
Verse 7 again: "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." Ecclesiastes 10:14 says, "A fool multiplies words." Jesus goes on to say, "Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him."
In other words, there's no need to drone on and on believing as the pagans do that the longer you're in a state of prayer, the greater the likelihood that God will hear you. If you are a Christian, God is with you. Of course He hears you. You are His child. And if you know that God knows all, then you know that God knows your needs even better than you know your needs. He who searches mind and heart knows what you're going to say before you say it.
Read Psalm 139.
That's a prayer we just read. All one hundred and fifty Psalms are prayers. If you need more examples on what to pray, there's literally a whole book of the Bible filled with them. Here David has said, "Before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether." Your thoughts aren't nonsense, are they? (Again, I might have to ask your friends about that.) If your thoughts aren't nonsense, don't let your words be nonsense. Pray clear prayers to the Lord as He has taught us to pray.
Now, just because God knows what we are going to pray before we pray it, that's no excuse not to pray. Don't say to yourself, "Well if God knows what I'm going to ask for, then why do I even need to bother asking?" That's prideful. That's like saying, "Well, my wife is supposed to love me no matter what, so why do I need to talk to her?" You talk to her because you want to—because you love her.
Likewise, pray to God because you want to. Just like you should talk to your spouse because you want to, because you love your spouse, pray to God because you love Him. You cannot have a relationship with someone you never talk to, and so it is the same with God. To neglect to pray to God is selfish. It's prideful. It's to say you've got this whole thing figured out and you don't need God.
Read Isaiah 7.
